Sensational Australian Animals

Explore the fascinating world of native Australian animals through the five basic senses – sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. Covering more than 145 truly astounding animals – from sharp-eyed whale sharks to sticky-bellied green tree frogs – Sensational Australian Animals showcases the strange things these creatures can do with their eyes, ears, noses, mouths and skin! Meet birds that laugh, frogs that quack and fish that sing. Discover mammals that glow in the dark and seahorses disguised as seaweed. Be surprised by turtles that breathe through their bums and squirm at lizards that clean their eyes with their tongues. And then there’s the dangerous creatures that bite and sting! Be intrigued, amazed and astonished by what insects, birds, spiders, fish and many other animals are capable of! Reading level varies from child to child, but we recommend this book for ages 8 to 12.

This book offers the first transnational historical study of the creation, contention and consequences of the Australian animal movement. Largely inspired by Peter Singer and his 1975 book Animal Liberation, a new wave of animal activism emerged in Australia and across the world. In an effort to draw public and media attention to the plight of animals, such as the rearing of pigs and poultry in factory farms and the export of live animals to the Middle East and South East Asia, Australian activists were often innovative and provocative in how they made their claims. Through lobbying, disruptive methods, and vegan activism, the animal movement consistently contested the politics and culture of how animals were used and exploited. Australians not only observed and learnt from people and events overseas, but also played significant international roles. This book examines the complex and conflicting consequences of the animal movement for Australian politics, as well as its influence on broader social change.

Australia is an extraordinary country and many unusual creatures call it their home. On land and in the sky, under the ground and underwater, that's where you'll find them. This non-fiction collection of animal stories lovingly places each amazing creature in the spotlight - with facts, figures, scientific names, gestation periods and breakout boxes to help bring them to life.

Contains the scripts of nine colonial plays, each script has been carefully edited or reconstructed from unique manuscripts or rare colonial printed editions.

To the first Europeans who came to Australia, everything seemed topsy turvy. Christmas was in the summer and trees shed their bark but not their leaves. And the animals were bizarre. There was a bird that laughed like a donkey and a type of greyhound that bound along on its hind legs like a hare. There was an animal in Tasmania whose nocturnal screeches sounded like the devil and a river creature that had a duck's bill at one end and a beaver's tail at the other. The Europeans had never seen anything like these animals before and gave them names similar to those of the European creatures they already knew. They drew and painted odd pictures of them, showing they did not understand the animals' habits. In one illustration, a wombat is standing on its back legs and in another a Tasmanian tiger is wrestling with a platypus of the same size.